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Does someone have a script for this? #interested I'm on the verge of deleting my Facebook account, but for the same reasons as given by OP i'm hesitant. Facebo

Does someone have a script for this? #interested I'm on the verge of deleting my Facebook account, but for the same reasons as given by OP i'm hesitant. Facebook is the only platform with i use to connect to some of my closest friends on the other side of the planet. Also staying up to date with events/parties. If there was an alternative for these, i would've ditched Facebook yesterday. I've wasted too many hours of my life scrolling through the feed, being subjected to all kinds of psychological manipulation. Not to mention that Facebook probably knows more about me subjectively than any other person. I'm done.

cwkoss 9y ago
Would be cool to make a script that just deletes everything older than 30 days. Then most of your friends wouldn't notice anything unusual about you in their news feed, but you wouldn't be making as much a large dataset for advertising and political marketing
- HankB99 9y ago
  Were I FB, I would make sure that the deletion only made the data invisible to the user and kept it for their customers. After all, we "gave them permission" in the first place so this would not violate that. If they're smart, they're already doing that.
  - naspinski 9y ago
    That is surely what is happening - a general (not always, I know!) rule in programming is to never delete anything, just mark it as deleted/deprecated/etc. and do not show it.
  - ascendantlogic 9y ago
    Yeah, I'm pretty sure deleting doesn't really take the data from Facebook. Really all you can do is stop the flow of new data to them.
  - cwkoss 9y ago
    This leaves two possibilities: If they don't let advertisers query deleted data - my original proposal would be effective at preventing third parties from getting your data. If they DO let advertisers query deleted data - you can 'poison' you account by posting and deleting a huge volume of misleading advertiser-relevant data.
lambda_lover 9y ago
I used a Firefox add-on for this a few months ago, but I don't think it was ever updated for compatibility with the webextensions API. If I'm remembering correctly, it was this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fb-purity-cleans-up-facebook/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fb-purity-cle... Worked very well for me. No reason you can't spin up an older version of FF (or 52 ESR) just to use this add-on. I cleaned out all of my account's information first, and then slowly weaned myself off of use of the News Feed when I had free time. Eventually I wasn't even logging in once a week and just up and deleted my account.
- ccozan 9y ago
  The same extension, but for Chrome, is what I use to browse facebook.
antsar 9y ago
I "deleted" 11 years of history using this[0] Chrome extension. Took a few days to get through everything, and I had to re-run it a few times because it missed things. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-manager/ljfidlkcmdmmibngdfikhffffdmphjae?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-m...
- barryduffman 9y ago
  So now you've given that extension full access to your Facebook account. And if you didn't uninstall it after using it, it's still able to see everything you do on Facebook. How is this any different from the Cambridge Analytica mess people were upset about in the first place?
- billysielu 9y ago
  Same, bit of a nightmare, but it did get there in the end.
- allanbreyes 9y ago
  It doesn't cover untagging, from I gather. Also, you can run it at 16x speed. It "deleted" ~15 years of history for me in less than an hour. And yes, it does miss a few things.
  - coryfklein 9y ago
    > It doesn't cover untagging Using the "Hide" button instead of the "Delete" button I think works on untagging.
    - allanbreyes 9y ago
      It hides it from _your_ timeline, but the backlink to your profile still remains. You have to actually untag it.
  - olyjohn 9y ago
    Do you really believe that it's completely deleted? My theory is that you can delete all you want, they still have it.
parliament32 9y ago
I'd be quite interested in a script that deletes "everything before X". I really haven't used FB much over the last few years, but there's plenty of embarrassing high school posts/comments I'd like to remove without purging everything. Doing it by hand isn't really feasible (we're talking a few thousand items here).
- scottydelta 9y ago
  please refer to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691368 I am using this extension right now after reading that comment.
  - parliament32 9y ago
    I'll try that out, thanks!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jogjayr 9y ago
> Facebook is the only platform with i use to connect to some of my closest friends on the other side of the planet. I keep saying this over and over. If you can't keep in active touch with someone (phone, email, IM, text, Skype) then they're not that important to you. It doesn't even need to be very frequent - once a quarter, every six months. If you can't manage that level of contact with someone* then there's little point hanging on to the feeling that you're still somehow connected with them. Every generation prior to ours accepted this as their reality and yet we feel we're different somehow. *Exception: everyone has friends that they may not talk to for years but as soon as you see them or get on the phone with them you can pick up the relationship effortlessly.
- gitgud 9y ago
  Something I've realised over the years, is that you can't "passively" maintain a friendship across the other side of the planet. You need to contact people directly in order to preserve meaningful relationships with them. Facebook makes it too easy to keep passive relationships with friends around the world, liking status's and photos are not meaningful interactions in my opinion... Unfortunately, this is how I no longer connect with a lot of my long distance friends.
  - jogjayr 9y ago
    I know right? If you never talk to these people they're essentially strangers that you know far too much about.
    - gitgud 9y ago
      Summed up my thoughts exactly.
Lionsion 9y ago
> I'm on the verge of deleting my Facebook account, but for the same reasons as given by OP i'm hesitant. I'm in the same boat. Here's a suggestion: 1) Keep your Facebook account. 2) Uninstall all their apps. 3) Replace your profile pic and cover photo with big banners saying you're no longer using Facebook and encouraging others to contact you elsewhere. The text should be big enough it's still readable which your pic is the smallest size. 4) Hide or delete all of your posts, photos, and likes. 5) Make a few posts over a period of time letting people know you're leaving. 6) Specifically contact your closest friends and ask them to keep you in the loop. 7) Bonus points: like random things that are uncharacteristic of you and upload and tag yourself in stock photos (e.g. from https://www.shutterstock.com/ https://www.shutterstock.com/). I made all the poison data private to keep from annoying anyone. This is what I did. I'm no longer on Facebook, but my profile is still up as a reminder to friends. If they're organizing an event, they have a reminder to message me outside of Facebook, and if they don't, I still get the notification. Just be warned. Facebook will act like a needy ex for awhile, trying to get you back. You just have to unsubscribe from the needy notifications.

cwkoss 9y ago

Would be cool to make a script that just deletes everything older than 30 days. Then most of your friends wouldn't notice anything unusual about you in their news feed, but you wouldn't be making as much a large dataset for advertising and political marketing

HankB99 9y ago
Were I FB, I would make sure that the deletion only made the data invisible to the user and kept it for their customers. After all, we "gave them permission" in the first place so this would not violate that. If they're smart, they're already doing that.
- naspinski 9y ago
  That is surely what is happening - a general (not always, I know!) rule in programming is to never delete anything, just mark it as deleted/deprecated/etc. and do not show it.
- ascendantlogic 9y ago
  Yeah, I'm pretty sure deleting doesn't really take the data from Facebook. Really all you can do is stop the flow of new data to them.
- cwkoss 9y ago
  This leaves two possibilities: If they don't let advertisers query deleted data - my original proposal would be effective at preventing third parties from getting your data. If they DO let advertisers query deleted data - you can 'poison' you account by posting and deleting a huge volume of misleading advertiser-relevant data.

lambda_lover 9y ago

I used a Firefox add-on for this a few months ago, but I don't think it was ever updated for compatibility with the webextensions API. If I'm remembering correctly, it was this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fb-purity-cleans-up-facebook/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fb-purity-cle... Worked very well for me. No reason you can't spin up an older version of FF (or 52 ESR) just to use this add-on. I cleaned out all of my account's information first, and then slowly weaned myself off of use of the News Feed when I had free time. Eventually I wasn't even logging in once a week and just up and deleted my account.

ccozan 9y ago
The same extension, but for Chrome, is what I use to browse facebook.

antsar 9y ago

I "deleted" 11 years of history using this[0] Chrome extension. Took a few days to get through everything, and I had to re-run it a few times because it missed things. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-manager/ljfidlkcmdmmibngdfikhffffdmphjae?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-m...

barryduffman 9y ago
So now you've given that extension full access to your Facebook account. And if you didn't uninstall it after using it, it's still able to see everything you do on Facebook. How is this any different from the Cambridge Analytica mess people were upset about in the first place?
billysielu 9y ago
Same, bit of a nightmare, but it did get there in the end.
allanbreyes 9y ago
It doesn't cover untagging, from I gather. Also, you can run it at 16x speed. It "deleted" ~15 years of history for me in less than an hour. And yes, it does miss a few things.
- coryfklein 9y ago
  > It doesn't cover untagging Using the "Hide" button instead of the "Delete" button I think works on untagging.
  - allanbreyes 9y ago
    It hides it from _your_ timeline, but the backlink to your profile still remains. You have to actually untag it.
- olyjohn 9y ago
  Do you really believe that it's completely deleted? My theory is that you can delete all you want, they still have it.

parliament32 9y ago

I'd be quite interested in a script that deletes "everything before X". I really haven't used FB much over the last few years, but there's plenty of embarrassing high school posts/comments I'd like to remove without purging everything. Doing it by hand isn't really feasible (we're talking a few thousand items here).

scottydelta 9y ago
please refer to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691368 I am using this extension right now after reading that comment.
- parliament32 9y ago
  I'll try that out, thanks!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jogjayr 9y ago

> Facebook is the only platform with i use to connect to some of my closest friends on the other side of the planet. I keep saying this over and over. If you can't keep in active touch with someone (phone, email, IM, text, Skype) then they're not that important to you. It doesn't even need to be very frequent - once a quarter, every six months. If you can't manage that level of contact with someone* then there's little point hanging on to the feeling that you're still somehow connected with them. Every generation prior to ours accepted this as their reality and yet we feel we're different somehow. *Exception: everyone has friends that they may not talk to for years but as soon as you see them or get on the phone with them you can pick up the relationship effortlessly.

gitgud 9y ago
Something I've realised over the years, is that you can't "passively" maintain a friendship across the other side of the planet. You need to contact people directly in order to preserve meaningful relationships with them. Facebook makes it too easy to keep passive relationships with friends around the world, liking status's and photos are not meaningful interactions in my opinion... Unfortunately, this is how I no longer connect with a lot of my long distance friends.
- jogjayr 9y ago
  I know right? If you never talk to these people they're essentially strangers that you know far too much about.
  - gitgud 9y ago
    Summed up my thoughts exactly.

Lionsion 9y ago

> I'm on the verge of deleting my Facebook account, but for the same reasons as given by OP i'm hesitant. I'm in the same boat. Here's a suggestion: 1) Keep your Facebook account. 2) Uninstall all their apps. 3) Replace your profile pic and cover photo with big banners saying you're no longer using Facebook and encouraging others to contact you elsewhere. The text should be big enough it's still readable which your pic is the smallest size. 4) Hide or delete all of your posts, photos, and likes. 5) Make a few posts over a period of time letting people know you're leaving. 6) Specifically contact your closest friends and ask them to keep you in the loop. 7) Bonus points: like random things that are uncharacteristic of you and upload and tag yourself in stock photos (e.g. from https://www.shutterstock.com/ https://www.shutterstock.com/). I made all the poison data private to keep from annoying anyone. This is what I did. I'm no longer on Facebook, but my profile is still up as a reminder to friends. If they're organizing an event, they have a reminder to message me outside of Facebook, and if they don't, I still get the notification. Just be warned. Facebook will act like a needy ex for awhile, trying to get you back. You just have to unsubscribe from the needy notifications.